londongrip.co.uk
Welcome to London Grip, a forum for reviews of books, shows & events – plus quarterly postings of new poetry.
Our most recent posts are listed below. Older posts can be explored via the search box and topic list.
For more information & guidelines on submitting reviews or poems please visit our Home page.

Jun 1 2017

# London Grip New Poetry – Summer 2017

*

This issue of London Grip features new poems by:

* Margarita Serafimova *Nod Ghosh *James Aitchison *Jim C Wilson *Andrew James
*George Tardios * Leni Dipple *Beth McDonough *Sally Long
*Caroline Natzler * Kevin Casey *Murray Bodo * Edward Lee
* Antony Johae * Sanjeev Sethi *Chris Beckett * Angela Kirby * Kevin Cahill
* Keith Hutson * Chris Hardy *Michael Lee Johnson * Rosemary Norman * Peter Branson
* Geraldine Gould *Angela Laxton *Kathryn Southworth * Matt Duggan *Ashley Griffiths

Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors

A printer-friendly version of London Grip New Poetry can be found at LG New Poetry Summer 2017

London Grip New Poetry appears early in March, June, September & December

Please send submissions to poetry@londongrip.co.uk, enclosing no more than three poems and a brief, 2-3 line, biography

We prefer to get submissions in the following windows: December-January, March-April, June-July and September-October i.e. avoiding the months when we are busy compiling a new issue

Editorial

When this issue is launched there will be about a week to go before the result of GE17 is declared. We cannot at the moment know – but we may well strongly suspect/hope/fear – what will be the orientation of the Houses of Parliament after June 8. Under these circumstances, our featured image (which might be no more than an amusing illustration for Chris Beckett’s reminiscent poem about his childhood) can be viewed as some species of omen regarding the political future of the (still just) United Kingdom.

The approach of an election seems not to have prompted many of our contributors to offer poems about British politics – although several submissions have been concerned with the current Republican President of the United States. About four years ago we indulged in some editorial reflections about the relative lack of political poetry in these pages. Since then the situation has not changed very much. But this issue demonstrates once again that what our contributors do do – and do very well – is to observe human emotions and interactions both at the personal level and at the scale of international issues like climate change and humanitarian crises. Sadly, the themes and rhetoric of today’s ill-tempered domestic politics seem not to be the stuff of which poetry is made..

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs

http://mikeb-b.blogspot.com/

Back to poet list… Forward to first poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Margarita Serafimova: Three poems

    12 December 2016
    I was in a spell.
    I was seated in the courtroom, watching the faces,
    the court was sitting,
    for a long moment silence had descended.
    The light was yellow, we all were deposited as if in amber.
    The eternal, the great theatre.

    10 December 2016
    I was abreast with your fear, a winter horse,
    we were pulling your sleigh.
    The harder I pulled, the swifter he galloped beside me,
    on flew your sleigh.
    His mane was touching my shoulder, blown by the wind made by my strength.
    It was chilling.

    19 December 2016
    Our parting was approaching with swift, firm steps,
    a woman with high hips.
    Nothing could be done.

Margarita Serafimova has published one book of poetry, Animals and Other Gods, in Bulgarian (Sofia University Press, 2016). Her second book, Demons and World, also in Bulgarian, is forthcoming in April 2017 (Black Flamingo Publishing, Sofia). Her poems in English have appeared in Outsider Poetry, Heavy Athletics, Anti-Heroin Chic, the Peacock Journal, Noble / Gas Quarterly, with others forthcoming in The Voices Project, Obra/ Artifact and The Stockholm Review of Literature. Margarita is a human rights lawyer.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MargaritaISerafimova/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Nod Ghosh: The Lake

    he intends to drive
    into the lake's
    watery depths

    nocturnal creatures
    and the desolation of
    fallen leaves
    his only company

    he waits

    he has considered
    pools of petroleum
    and the oiliness
    of blood

    a threat to fish
    that will surround his
    sinking station wagon

    he has thought of the rush
    of water into lungs
    the hush of tyres
    into mud

    the anxiety
    of water fowl

    who expect
    fallen branches
    or the flick of a rat's tail

    and will see instead
    metal slip through liquid
    and the dark light
    of his face

Nod Ghosh was born in the U.K. and now lives in Christchurch, New Zealand. Nod’s work features in various New Zealand and international publications. Nod is an associate editor for Flash Frontier, an Adventure in Short Fiction. Further details:http://www.nodghosh.com/about/
Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    James Aitchison: Our First Suicides
    'Often, very often, Sylvia and I would talk at length about our first suicides

    […] We talked death and this was life for us’.

    Anne Sexton: ‘The Bar Fly Ought to Sing’ in No Evil Star

    Thrilled by the rhythms of each other’s voice
    reading poems in Lowell’s seminar,
    Anne and Sylvia drove to the Boston Ritz,
    drank martinis
    and gossiped suicidal rhapsodies.

    They didn’t say ‘attempts at suicide’:
    they spoke as agents of the living dead.
    Each new poem would be posthumous.

    Anne looked in the bathroom mirror: her lips were worms.
    She looked again: she was a rat.
    She sat in her parked car. She had nowhere to go.
    She coupled a snaking hosepipe to the exhaust,
    looked in the driving mirror and mouthed goodbye.

    Young Esther was an American fantasist.
    This was England: unholy matrimony,
    insufferable single parenthood.
    Sylvia knelt down in the English way
    and turned the little brass knob.
    The escaping sigh was barely audible.

.
Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    James Aitchison: Duchy
    Edward Kennedy ‘Duke’ Ellington: 1899-1974

    Green’s Playhouse, Glasgow
    was a northern outpost on his farewell tour.

    Ellington and the elders in his band –
    Hodges, Bigard, Williams, Carney, Brown –
    came from cotton fields to the Cotton Club
    where white folk danced to a black composer’s tunes.

    I entered his duchy to hear the Duke hold court.

    The players on the Playhouse stage that night
    looked older than the men in the photographs.
    On the road for more than thirty years
    they had grown white-haired, arthritic, venerable.

    ‘Solitude’, ‘Take the A Train’, ‘Caravan’ –
    the big band played symphonic black-man blues.

    Ellington rose from his piano stool.
    Centre-stage, a silent soloist
    in rhythm with the double bass and drums,
    he bounced invisible tennis balls –
    one, two, one-two-three-four –
    and lobbed them over the invisible net
    to detonate among the audience.

    His farewell tour
    was a world-wide caravan of one-night stands.
    The A Train halted at Woodlands Cemetery.

    I’m deaf but the cortex is intact:
    I hear the ghost train on its farewell tour.

James Aitchison was born in 1938 in Stirlingshire and educated in Glasgow. He has published six collections of poems, the most recent being The Gates of Light (Mica Press, 2016)

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Jim C Wilson: Autumn Leaves
    (Les Feuilles Mortes)

    I wallowed in the sweep of falling strings
    and lush satin tones of Nat King Cole.
    He sang of leaves of red and gold,
    the sunburned hands I used to hold –
    and how, my darling, days grew long.
    In slid the brass, honeyed and lulling.
    The leaves drifted past, as they usually do,
    and I was  softly seduced – yet again.
    Loss was so sweet, heartbreak so smooth.

    But last night I heard a saxophonist play:
    he gripped that song and twisted every bar;
    he stripped the trees to their bare black branches
    and blew the oncoming winds of winter.
    His discord bit like acid in my gut;
    each note was a 3 a.m. emptiness.
    And when I lost the tune, I fully knew
    the essence of the song, its agony.

Jim C Wilson‘s writing has been widely published for some 35 years. He has had five collections of poetry published and his poems have been featured in over 30 anthologies. He has been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Edinburgh and Napier University. He has taught his Poetry in Practice classes at Edinburgh University since 1994. Jim lives in Gullane, East Lothian.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Andrew James: days

           i
    shortest day
    of the year —
    corners
    and surfaces
    in the house
    remain
    dark
    all day
    long

           ii
    on the desk
    your diary
    pages flapping
    in the breeze —
    yesterday tomorrow
    last-week today

           iii
    the days getting longer ?
    evening sun
    lingers
    in rooms now vacant —
    the weight
    of lifelong
    load-bearing walls
    echoing
    in the stillness

Andrew James lives and works as an editor in London

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    George Tardios: Nyasi - Grass

    After rains
    When wind shivers
    Grass taller than my head undulates like snakes
    Waves invitingly to travellers
    To step into its boomslang-greenness

    Be wary.
    To step into high grass is to be enveloped
    In itching seeds
    Trip over roots
    Become soaked after rain
    If near a village to be covered in fleas.

    Grass can become an enemy
    Camouflage predators
    Around African huts it is cleared well-away
    Hard red earth is a firebreak
    Revealing reptiles.

    And yet soft temptation drags us in.
    Food for our donkeys
    Comfortable, we think.
    Until covered in grass seeds
    Knocked stupid from stumbles
    Faced with thickets
    We begin to hack.

George Tardios was first Director of Totleigh Barton, the Arvon Foundation’s first residential creative writing centre in Devon. He has had poems in various PEN/Arts Council anthologies, and The London Magazine.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Leni Dipple: Cross-dressed Dandy
    (taraxacum officinale)

    this squat growth inside
    the strawberry bed solicits …
    i’ve no nostalgia for sweet
    but hunger for bitter
    to cleanse the blood, the liver

    if i were polite
    (wrong season)
    i would write of ‘pursed lips’ PC
    inside petticoats of green
    but the season is rude
    calls for an other politic
    an other poétique

    so i pick you
    fat beauteous bulbous bud
    ….  you inviting bum

    ‘passez dans le poêle'’ in butter
    you’re taken in better!

The dandelion (pissenlit) is a great tonic, a real restorative of our whole system as we come out of winter. The leaves should be gathered before they flower, but the bud can be eaten. My neighbour Pepette told me her diabetic father derived great benefit from the leaves eaten as a salad, or ‘passez dans le poêle’, added to an omelette.

Leni Dipple is mainly a gardener and sometimes a poet. She has lived in SW France since 2002 restoring herself and her home. Her ‘garden in movement’ (see Gilles Clement) is ongoing and she has been hosting wwoofers since 2007, (see wwoof.fr). Priapus Press published a chapbook Switchback Angels in 1994 and a full-length collection Between Rivers was published by Oldcastle Books in 2014

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Beth McDonough: Smashing pumpkins

    Go on. Advertise yourselves, splay
    akimbo by aging onions’
    bent-neck lines. Spread
    your gold, stick stamens out – be
    big, be blatant, be by far
    this bed’s brightest, most bawdy stars.

    But, pumpkins – you are
    mind-fucks.
    Flagrant fertility? Easy lays?
    All myth. Your open
    free-love invitation doesn’t happen.
    Passing insects                    pass – yes pass
    tempted by more subtle stuff.

    I brush past, dispense
    my quiet I.V.F.

Beth McDonough trained in Silversmithing at GSA, completing her M.Litt at Dundee University . Writer in Residence at Dundee Contemporary Arts 2014-16, her poetry appears in Agenda, Causeway, Antiphon and elsewhere and her reviews in DURA. Handfast , her pamphlet with Ruth Aylett (Mother’s Milk, May 2016) charts family experiences – Aylett’s of dementia and McDonough’s of autism.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Sally Long: Terminus

    The next station is Arctic Ocean,
    (orbiting satellites observe the earth,
    see the big picture, send data
    plotting melting ice, expanding seas)
    Mind the gap between the ice floes.

    The next station is Monteverde
    (Cloud Forest, where the golden toad
    once burrowed in tree roots,
    before emerging to spawn one last time)
    Other species are ready to depart.

    The next station is Great Barrier Reef,
    (where poisoned from within,
    stressed coral expels brown algae,
    becoming a pale skeleton)
    Stand clear of the UV rays.

    The next station is Apocalypse,
     (where this world terminates.)
    All change.

Sally Long is a PhD student at Exeter University. She has had poems published in magazines including Agenda, Ink, Sweat and Tears, London Grip, Poetry Salzburg Review and Snakeskin amongst others. Sally edits Allegro Poetry Magazine.
Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Caroline Natzler: Creation

    Rows of small pyramids, ice white
    sparkling with sun and wind

    pool after pool of water
    moving in from the sea, each a gentle wash of colour

    an early tender pink
    a rippled yellow, the first hue an infant reaches for

    a babbling green, and beneath the surface
    strange patches like ancient fish, footprints

    pools draining into fields of star pile pyramids

    with black buckets left tipped at a neat angle
    to match the dazzling diagonals

    the long creation of men and boys
    skin ravaged by the work of the salt pans.

Caroline Natzler‘s poetry collections are Design Fault (Flambard Press 2001), Smart Dust (Grenadine Press 2009), Fold (Hearing Eye 2014) and Only (Grenadine Press 2015). Caroline teaches creative writing at the City Lit.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Kevin Casey: Snowstorm: For an Infant Son

    The headlights make a million threads
          of the falling snow, and the wind is a loom

    that weaves them into a white cocoon
          surrounding my car, and at every curve

    and downhill slope, I feel my rear wheels hold
          their breath as they lose contact with the road.

    But it’s the thought of you, at home and wrapped
          in your own cocoon of robin’s egg flannel,

    grown and driving through the weather of the world
          that I worry over, and not myself.

    In you, there is no immortality,
          only a shift in that burden of care,

    and with each mile into the blinding white
          I grow less significant,
                and my hands relax upon the wheel.

Kevin Casey is the author of And Waking… (Bottom Dog Press, 2016), and American Lotus (Glass Lyre Press, 2018), winner of the 2017 Kithara Prize. His poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Rust+Moth, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Pretty Owl Poetry, and Cleaver. For more, visit andwaking.com.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Murray Bodo: The Young Boy and the River
    Let him think I am more than I am and I will be so
    Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

    There where lost trout would haunt
    my hands after shivering back to
    the river I’d snatched them from,
    is a good place for dreaming
    myself into a courage that
    won’t let losing fights shake me.

    I still keep idle fly rods
    standing in the corner of
    the metal shed where I write.
    They’re not fashioned of bamboo
    but I imagine them so,
    to be the true fisherman
    I am not, except here on
    the page where poems happen.

    The fly rods, still trembling
    from a Cutthroat Trout’s escape,
    are in the dream their conjury
    drew from memory.
    There I’m fishing a real
    river inside a made-up
    boyhood, brave like
    the old man in Hemingway’s
    story of loss and courage.

    I wait for brave words to strike,
    try to equal their power.

Murray Bodo is a Franciscan priest who resides at Pleasant Street Friary in inner-city Cincinnati, Ohio. He spends two months of the year in Rome and Assisi as a staff member of “Franciscan Pilgrimage Programs.” His latest book is a spiritual autobiography, Gathering Shards: A Franciscan Life, and he is presently working on new and selected poems entitled Far Country Near.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Edward Lee: Summer Play

    My daughter's high laughter
    outside my closed window
    takes me from my desk,
    the words I wanted to arrange
    in an order that sings
    on the stubbornly tuneless page,
    no longer so important
    when measured against
    lost summer days.

Edward Lee‘s poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and American, including The Stinging Fly, Acumen and Smiths Knoll. His debut poetry collection Playing Poohsticks On Ha’Penny Bridge was published in 2010. He is currently working towards a second collection.
Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Antony Johae: Among the Pumps
    (an extract from Lines on Lebanon)

    It was Eid al-Fitr and everyone was out;
    from portraits slung on central lampposts
    Nasrallah looked down on Beirut’s airport road,
    on cars bumper-to-bumper with pipe works in the way,
    their heavy hooting seeming celebratory
    as walkers passed hazardously between them.
    On the makeshift sidewalk old men fingering clicking beads
    sat on chairs rickety with age; children scampered
    inches from the choked road or rode merrily on fair horses;
    and in near alleys women, some in hijab, chatted
    or lugged their wares home to sleepy husbands.
    Out of the din, lusty youths laughed loudly at unheard jokes,
    eyed flirting girls casually across safe space
    while men mingled and drifted into conversation,
    drank coffee to the dregs, pulled on pungent cigarettes
    and ruminated on Nasrallah’s exhortations.

    We pulled in for fuel, my daughter and I,
    to a couple of pumps, one not working,
    with festive music blazing
    from somewhere at the station rear.
    We waited in the oil-caked forecourt
    as the music beat out,
    the Premium went in,
    and the clock went up,
    the young man in soiled shirt
    talking to my daughter through the car window.

    Then came an unexpected vision
    – through the mouldy pumps she made her way
    like a queen passing among filthy paupers –
    sleek-haired
    pearl ear-ringed
    eyes underwater dark
    coral-lovely lips
    face fine-figured
    neck cloth-covered
    close-contoured to hips
    slim-waisted to bare ankles
    to straps of open silver shoes
    – all caught in casual display
    as she cat-walked through the station.

Eid al-Fitr – Muslim holiday; hijab, – headscarf

Antony Johae divides his time between Lebanon and the UK. In 2015 he published Poems of the East. A new collection Lines on Lebanon is in preparation.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Sanjeev Sethi: By the Way

    Your eyelash in my daybook requires no anatomizing
    as your look-in is a day old. A lustrum ago when spotted
    eavesdropping or snooping for slips in my wallet or wardrobe
    you came at me with: what do u know what love is? I had no idea,
    still don’t. Silence seals it as I pucker my lips and blow you away.

Sanjeev Sethi is the author of three well-received books of poetry. His most recent collection is This Summer and That Summer (Bloomsbury, 2015). His poems are in venues around the world: 3:AM Magazine, Bindwind Magazine, Novelmasters, Morphrog 14, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Tower Journal, Peacock Journal, One Sentence Poems, Boston Accent Lit, The Bond Street Review, Rasputin, Red Fez, Poetry Pacific, Transnational Literature, Otoliths, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Chris Beckett: Three slaves of Sodom go to the Mercato
    for Robel Hailu

    A trinity of cursed boys
    two short, one tall, their hair in corkscrews
    so the air must feel it

    sit in Tomoco’s
    sipping three small lions of coffee
    from Harar

    before they sally out again
    freely but together, like a small fleet of lake-dhows
    into the deep souks of the Mercato

    where all admire the width
    of their smiles, how warmly their boat-fingers praise
    a cotton or the fish-buckle of a belt

    and one stallholder, whom they call Gashay!
    (meaning My Shield! to express affection for the sort of older man
    who plays an uncle figure lightly, but with seriousness)

    out-spreads his sails
    as you would too – how we thirst for tolerance, a little keg of
    colour to nurture the flame!

    shouting

                     welcome, citizens!
                 my brave-chinned zegas!

    and everything his stall possesses
    of traditional shirts and shawls, and cheerful prices
    gets up on its feet and sings

gebre sodomawi: common pejorative, slave of Sodom
Mercato: the vast open market in the centre of Addis Ababa
zega (citizen): what many gay Ethiopians call each other

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

dad
British
a kindly
like
people
clocking
eye
his huge
white tents
bazaar’s
over the
rising
canvas
painted
Big Ben
behind it
and above all this
a raffled flight to London but not starting here
a bobby by the Mini standing with his truncheon and his hat
a tent in front of which a Mini, blue
a rack of MiniSkirts and PinStripe Suits
Rolos ToffeeCups Boleros Munchies Smarties FruitGums Caramacs
one look from these eyes says it all
Moody Talk Dolly Talk Groovy Talk
Max Factor’s poster saying
St Michael’s underpants
tea and scones under a raspberry parasol
HP Sauce
Christmas puddings

Chris Beckett: Big Ben in an Ethiopian field

Chris Beckett grew up in Ethiopia in later years of Haile Selassie. His collection, Ethiopia Boy, was published by Carcanet/Oxford Poets in 2013 and his translations of Ethiopian poets have appeared in Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry Review and PN Review. He was short-listed last year for the Ted Hughes Award

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Angela Kirby:  The Thing

    OK, so he likes to try out these places
    and always has to be first to discover
    them, but I’ll never forgive him for what
    he did in the last one, lounging back in
    his chair as if he owned the joint, that
    new place in Camden Road on the RH
    corner of whats-it street, which is meant
    to be so cool, while me, I just can’t see it,
    they all seem the same-old, same-old,
    with square slate plates, and those poncy
    menus which I can’t read because the
    bloody lights are virtually non existent
    while all the staff look about sixteen and
    worse, they say ‘good choice’ whatever
    we order, God, it pisses me off, but when
    he picked up this thing between fingers
    and thumb, threw it on my plate, then
    snarled and swore at the smarmy waiters,
    that did it. I said ‘Sod you, Dusty’, got to
    my feet, buggered off, didn’t look back.

London based Angela Krby gives readings all round the UK, Europe and the USA. Her four collections are published by Shoestring Press and a fifth is underway.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Kevin Cahill: Nudes
     “an abode of naked beggars, is the land of Ireland”
      – Hermann von Pückler-Muskau, Ireland, 1828

    An almost nude gang whittled to scanties
    prop themselves up on a bed of trash
    shouting and begging: Long life to your Lord, they say,
    when his carriage passes, or Long life to your Lordship,
    when his window traverses
    their pancake-like profiles. Their little skin
    procured by his chosen peering, puckering-u
    like crickets for his silken insides, and vaunting
    their rear-ends for him like spatchcocks.
    O what pleases your Honour, they say
    when they lean like grasses: the same tramps
    we watch after midnight
    .
    for a quid a minute.

Kevin Cahill is a poet from Cork City, Ireland. A graduate of University College, Cork, he has worked over the years for The European Commission, Cork Institute of Technology, and as a reiki practitioner. He has been writing poetry for about 10 years and has been published in journals in Ireland, the UK, and the US, including Berkeley Poetry Review, The Manchester Review, Poetry Ireland Review, The London Magazine, Agenda, Magma, The SHOp, The Edinburgh Review, gorse, The Glasgow Review of Books, The Oxonian Review and presently with The Stinging Fly. He is presently seeking a publisher for his first book of poems.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Keith Hutson: Memory Man
    i.m. Herbert Fernandez 1813-1898

    We all recalled his glory days, before
    grey whiskers: Ask me anything! Facts filled
    Hull Hippodrome, staccato-sharp and sure –
    no doubt about the data he revealed;
    his mind as rich as any bank – robust
    beyond belief. But why, in later life, when
    age ate his reserves and he stood at a loss,
    did no one treasure Herbert less, or blame
    him playing to our faith instead of trust?
    Why weren’t his nightly clangers billed, at best,
    as laughable: what makes ovation last?
    Let’s call it love, and hope, when we become
    befuddled by our audience, uncertain,
    our performance isn’t mocked, but smiled upon.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Keith Hutson: Crowd Control
    i.m. The Bryn Pugh Sponge Dancers c.1855

    A soft act to follow? Nothing did –
    they always went on last, the buffer spot,
    when people put their coats on, filtered out
    with half an eye on them: Our job, Bryn said,
    was to prevent a crush, a bottleneck
    of bodies heading home. We weren’t much good,
    see? Some saw that straight away and got
    the early tram. Still, I suppose a few would

    hang on till the end, hoping for more than
    mattresses three women sank into, sprang from.
    There is more, though: Bryn married all of them,
    you could say on a triple-rebound, then
    wrote a memoir, Ups And Downs, confessing two
    had been his daughters, and the other knew.

Keith Hutson has been widely-published in journals. This year Smith Doorstop are to publish his second pamphlet, Troupers. On Feb 9 he read with Carol Ann Duffy, at her invitation, at the Royal Society of Literature’s TS Eliot Memorial event at the British Library. He is now on the editorial board of Poetry Salzburg. His poetry is soon to be featured on BBC Radio 3.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Chris Hardy : School Portrait

    Now her Dad’s inside they say
    she’ll go from bad to worse.
    She smiles and says Hello.
    When you smile back
    she’s caught your courtesy
    hanging out
    and hooks you with a sneer.

    Her boots are fat,
    she pushes her black jacket
    up around her neck,
    chews under her crop,
    opens her mouth
    to spit or ask,
    Why doesn’t Santa Claus
    have any kids? Because
    he only comes once a year,
    down a chimney.

    At nights she hunts with others
    similar, her Mum’s got
    a bad heart,
    propped on the sofa,
    TV and drinks,
    any odd one out
    can expect a hammering.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Chris Hardy: Probate

    A dozen picture frames neatly stacked,
    sharpened pencils and an ivory knife,
    folded squares of lace,
    small cups with scenes
    of eighteenth century Oxford and
    a print of a park near Arundel
    that no one wants.

    In the shed a box of new door fittings
    and on the top a ‘Georgian style’
    brass letter-flap, still wrapped,
    ready to be fitted in a slot
    cut in the freshly painted door,
    through which letters
    from the future will fall.

Chris Hardy has lived in Asia and Africa and now lives in London. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines, anthologies, and websites in the UK and elsewhere, including Poetry Review, the Rialto, Interpreter’s House, the North and London Grip. They have won prizes in the National Poetry Society’s and other competitions. His fourth collection will be published in 2017. He is also a member of LiTTLe MACHiNe (little-machine.com) performing settings of famous poems at literary events around the UK and abroad. They are currently working with Roger McGough and have made a new album with him.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Michael Lee Johnson: Mount Pleasant Cemetery
    Toronto, Canada

    Gravediggers uprooting caskets
    with sharp, steel shovels –
    each slicing step downward
    through nerve-rooted earth
    copper pennies jingle in change
    pouches dangling by their sides.

    They chat casually of Jesus,
    His painless resurrection
    from the sealed tomb,
    money-changers being chased
    away from God’s holy temple.

Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. He is a Canadian and USA citizen. Today he is a poet, editor, publisher, freelance writer, amateur photographer and small business owner in Itasca, Illinois. He has been published in more than 935 small press magazines in 33 countries, and he edits 10 poetry sites. Author’s website http://poetryman.mysite.com/.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Rosemary Norman: Companions

    Six weeks later, after the cast was off,
    the wrist that had been broken, mended now
    went to a funeral.

    There was a walk between the graves
    of others, ancient trees and first blossom
    under a quiet sky.

    There was him in a dark car, talk of
    him, music he loved. Afterwards food, drink,
    embraces, laughter.

    To its companion the misshapen wrist
    was a weeping stranger you’d want to comfort
    but unsure of its temper.

Shoestring Press published Rosemary Norman’s third collection, For example, in 2016. With video artist Stuart Pound, she makes films with poems as image, soundtrack and sometimes both. See them on Vimeo.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Peter Branson: Seeing the Solstice in
    Midwinter, 2016/17    i.m. Derek Bolton

    Poems everywhere – no time to shape them all,
    not birds and bees, dark stuff, more sinewy
    than sunlight through high trees – the city where,
    on dire estates, lined up like coffin boards,
    abandoned dominoes, shop fronts expire
    in rows. To make life bearable, most seize
    the day,  junk food, cheap booze, back-burner ‘Ye
    are many – they …’ still simmering away.
    I search bright eyes, young Jack-the-lads, their girls,
    unstoppable, alive, mothers with kids,
    long queues to board entitlement slow train,
    third class, their pennies dropped, old blokes who’ve seen
    it all ignoring bollocks. They contrive,
    pretend tab ends concealed behind clenched fists.

    Back from the city, coppice gate to ride,
    I muse on life ill spent, more fortune than
    design, the early evening of this year’s
    midnight, a breviary to wasted time.
    This sky’s the brushwork of a fallen star,
    red shifted might-have-beens, a running sore
    despondent with hindsight – and portents too,
    the wounded herald, battles, wrongs to right.
    Big picture bleared, betrayed by those supposed
    to fight their corner on Damascus Road,
    dismayed, they’re bloody-minded, foxes out
    to beat the hunting ban, apostasy,
    side with the enemy, M-way to self-
    destruct, vote Brexit, sound the final Trump.

Peter Branson has been published in Britain, US, Canada, Ireland, Australasia and South Africa: Acumen, Ambit, Agenda, Envoi, London Magazine, North, Prole, Warwick Review, Iota, Butcher’s Dog, Frogmore Papers, Interpreter’s House, SOUTH, Crannog, THE SHOp & Causeway. His selected poems came out 2013, his latest collection, Hawk Rising, in 2016

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Geraldine Gould: Atlantic

    Some giant had the name first,
    hailed from Greece, down Santorini way,
    was tricked into holding up the sky, they say,
    by an even bigger-muscled guy. Fearless,
    they clashed for just a bunch of apples.

    Books took on the name, mountainous worlds
    mapped out beyond the pillars, before
    a river so vast it encompassed everything,
    separating east from west.
    Did someone guess what was to come?

    Ah, new world, old world,
    now we get it. The river has poured
    into a pond, the boats are clanking
    with remembered chains. No more
    heroes across this ocean, just tinkling
    tones, and crazy talk of walls and fencing,
    tricks from a new guy with orange hair.
    He is standing on waves of fear. Dappled
    fruits swell, preparing to fall, or burst.

Geraldine Gould ‘s professional life in education as teacher, lecturer and manager of integrated services for children and families spanned forty years. She is currently a humanist celebrant and lives thirty miles south of Edinburgh in the Scottish Borders.
Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

..
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Angela Laxton: Oradour

    A summer day in pastoral France
    seemed like any other.
    Lunchtime over, the afternoon began,
    clearing dishes, back to work and school,
    until an unfamiliar sound destroyed the peace.

    At first unsuspecting,
    grumbling, obeying
    the order to assemble.
    Then a growing sense of fear,
    those guns are real.
    Worry now at separation,
    Men stay!
    Women, children, Move!
    Four o’clock, the explosion.
    scatters death in all directions,
    followed by brutal and efficient
    eradicating fire.
    The noise. The smell.

    In the church,
    a woman jumped to safety from a window,
    some young men were able to play dead.
    A few hid away in their houses.
    The lucky ones in Limoges
    returned at the end of the day.

    No tickets here, this view is free,
    there is a silence of respect,
    imagination left to make the leap,
    a sense of shared identity.
    Why here?  This could be you and you.

    Browned blackness,
    smouldered bricks,
    starkly edge the roadways.
    twisted tramlines, trailing wires,
    cafes, shops and homes
    ruins in their uniformity.
    Common metal artefacts,
    stand out against the damaged walls,
    wrecks of cars, cookers, pram wheels.

    At the end, an empty shell
    site of screams and suffocating horror
    no longer a place of sanctuary.

    A summer day in pastoral France,
    seemed like any other.
    Picnic first, drive on, arrive,
    park and cross the road to look.

    Disturbed in the shadows underneath a tree
    a brown striped snake slithers into darkness.

On 10 June 1944, the village of Oradour-sur-Glane was destroyed, when 642 of its inhabitants, including women and children, were massacred by the Nazi SS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oradour-sur-Glane_massacre

Angela Laxton was born in East Anglia but has lived in London for most of her life. She was a teacher and eventually principal of a school for children with physical disabilities.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Kathryn Southworth: Skipping the page

    The Castle of Adventure – once known by heart –
    and the illustrated page near the beginning
    that I had to turn with eyes closed –
    the intruder lunging at a boy as he fled downstairs –
    too dark altogether for a girl of eight,
    even though I knew it wasn’t real.

    .     An old man in Australia on tv, weeping
    .     as he remembered how they told the craven lie
    .     his parents were both dead;

    .          the child in the Syrian ambulance,
    .          blank-eyed, alone,
    .          his entire family wiped out
    .          by one side or another;

    .               the woman’s face the acid melted
    .               when her boyfriend couldn’t stand rejection;

    .                    the Azizi girl narrating her abduction,
    .                    traded, raped, trying to hang herself,
    .                    or open up an artery and bleed to death.

    It’s harder now to turn the page.

Kathryn Southworth is a retired academic living in London. She has published reviews and poems in a number of anthologies and magazines including South, South Bank Poetry and Artemis.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Matt Duggan: Metal

    We are selling the metal that kills
    so we can afford the spoons that feed our children;
    then killing them with the metal that we’ve just sold
    feeding them with the blood on the spoons from happy meals.

    We place them in the hands of our enemy –
    how far into this storm must we walk before we feel the cold? –
    preferring the shine of falling eggshells in metal
    where breath with flesh is applied – prescribed to only gain
    from the metals of subtraction.

    The daylight would be our undoing
    eyes were transfixed by computer generated handshakes –
    division of the heart is the lie of man’s inked ruin
    where only smoke rings travel along carpets like tiny drunken mice.

    We are selling the metal that kills
    so we can afford the spoons that feed our children.

Matt Duggan was winner of the erbacce prize in 2015 and winner of the Into the Void Poetry Prize in 2016. His poems have appeared in The Journal, Prole, Ink, Sweat, and Tears, The Dawntreader. He has a new chapbook out with Hunting Raven Press called Metropolis. see http://www.huntingraven.com

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Ashley Griffiths: The Outlaw and the Ghost

    Building skyscrapers on sand bars
    Shadows of yesterday
    Racing away down the central reservation
    There goes the outlaw
    Dressed eternally in a superman cape
    With sunglasses to hide the tears
    That won't come
    Out of order yet another time, he sighs
    So, how do you say goodbye to a ghost?

    Drawing lines in the dust
    As the sun fails to rise
    The outlaw still searches for a dream
    To ride off into
    One last look
    The road is calling
    But the outlaw is still haunted by
    The age old conundrum
    How do you say goodbye to a ghost?

    The vultures circle
    As the outlaw plans his escape
    To replace the shadow
    He left in his place long ago
    Drawing lines in the dust
    All that is left
    Is a smile
    As the realisation takes hold
    So, this is how you say goodbye to a ghost

Ashley Griffiths is originally from Leamington Spa in the UK, but these days can usually be found wandering around Asia in search of new adventures. He has been writing poetry for a long time and after years of procrastination, he has finally decided to put his poetry out into the world.

Back to poet list…

### Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.